This crazy wooden staircase looks like a tornado frozen in time

Nestled inside a 43-story office tower in Tel Aviv is a staircase that looks like a tornado.

Designed by architect Oded Halaf and crafted by Tomer Gelfand, the structure rises nearly 46 feet from the ground of the building's four-story lobby, forming an interior balcony on the first-floor mezzanine.

The lines it creates look straight out of a drawing or painting, and even resemble the spiral shapes so prevalent in Tim Burton's iconic films.

Take a look.

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The structure is composed of two parts: a spiral staircase and a tornado-like shape, which begins at ground-level and rises to form a viewing platform above the lobby.

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To build the stairs, craftsman Tomer Gelfand built a skeletal metal staircase, which is enveloped in the complex, interlocking wooden exterior.

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More than 29,500 feet of poplar wood were used to create the curved arches of the structure. Though the pieces may look flexible or bendable, they’re actually very stiff.

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The pieces of wood were all cut to fit into their specific part of the design, and aren't interchangeable. Each was coded and marked based on its individual position.

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When cut, the raw poplar wood showed a variety of natural colors, which would have hindered the seamless quality of the structure. To unify the design, Gelfand picked a palette 12 average shades.

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From the time he was given an initial sketch, it took Gelfand 18 months to complete the project.

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The glass skyscraper that houses the staircase has LEED Platinum certification, which means it reaches the highest possible level of sustainability and resource efficiency. So it’s fitting that its lobby feature an organic-looking installation.

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But while the aesthetic takes many cues from the natural world and looks almost hand-drawn, the designers carefully planned the structure's shape using a computer algorithm.